[Goon]

I'm trying to do an animation and i want to use painter. However the whole system seems a bit messed up. Is it just me or is there only one panel for controling the frames, support for only one animated layer, no tweens, etc. Am i missing something?

[Pat]

Yeah, it's a painting program not an animation studio.

Painter's animation capabilities are rudimentary; the Frame Stack menu is just about everything. There's a few more command under the Movie pull down menu and several helpful keyboard commands for paging through your frames.

If you need more you need a dedicated animation program.

-Pat

[Goon]

Yeah. thx for answering. I am about a hundred frames in (didnt say it was good quality) and its being a real pain. Can only use one layer, cause making another automatically overrides the animation layer. Can only make a background by painting it in a layer first then incorporating it into the animation layer, then i can animate. Onion skin is only in the little preview window and it still sux there. But i have to get this done so i'll have to live with it. Better than animating with photoshop which is my other alternative

[Pat]

100 frames in sounds pretty serious. Painter's animation features seem centered around smaller animated gif style work or adding paint effects to existing footage. There's also some rotoscoping potential --but pure cel animation in 640x480 or higher becomes a challenging proposition past 20-30 frames due to the lack of flexibility in timing.

I wouldn't try doing anything serious with compositing in Painter either --it's too much of a pain. In your case, you're better off making all the individual animated and background elements in Painter and then compositing them in a program like Adobe After Effects. That way, you can tweak the timing with more precision and have sub-pixel control over the movement for the best interpolation. After Effects has far better output options as well.

If you're working on a substantial project that doesn't require Painter's unique brush engine you might be better off purchasing a dedicated animation program such as RETAS.

-Pat

[egerie]

FYI, I beleive someone is selling their copy of RETAS somewhere on the board.

Good luck with that project Goon